Jury Convicts Massachusetts Mom Who Withheld Cancer Medications

LAWRENCE, Mass.
(AP) — A Massachusetts woman who withheld at-home chemotherapy medications from
her autistic, cancer-stricken son was convicted of attempted murder Tuesday by
jurors who dismissed her claim that she thought the side effects of the treatment
could kill him.

Kristen LaBrie
also was found guilty of child endangerment and assault and battery for failing
to give her son, Jeremy Fraser, at least five months of cancer medications
after the boy was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2006. He died in 2009
at age 9.

LaBrie, 38,
told the jury she stopped giving him the medications because she couldn't bear
to see how sick the side effects made him.

Prosecutors
portrayed her as a single mother seething with resentment because she had to
care for Jeremy alone.

LaBrie, who
appeared teary-eyed but resigned as the verdict was read, consoled her sobbing
sister in the front row.

As she was led
away in handcuffs, she mouthed "I love you" to her family.

Juror Paul
Holladay told The Associated Press the panel quickly reached verdicts on the
lesser charges, but "the deliberation on the attempted murder charge was
heart-wrenchingly difficult."

"When we
started that discussion, the majority of us did not expect to find Ms. LaBrie
guilty, nor did we want to find her guilty," he said.

But Holladay said the jury became convinced of her guilt
after going over various scenarios in which they would find LaBrie not guilty.

"The more
we reviewed the evidence, the more we were led, reluctantly, to the conclusion
that those scenarios were implausible, and that Ms. LaBrie was, beyond a
reasonable doubt, guilty," he said.

"She
consistently said she was giving Jeremy the medication, consistently said she
understood the importance of it, and consistently did not give him the
medication and didn't want anybody to know," Holladay
said.

Jeremy's
oncologist, Dr. Alison Friedmann of Massachusetts General Hospital, had
testified that she told LaBrie her son's cancer had a cure rate of 85 percent
to 90 percent under a two-year, five-phase treatment plan that included some
hospital stays, regular visits to the hospital clinic to receive chemotherapy
treatments and at-home administration of several cancer medications.

Friedmann said
the boy's cancer went into remission after months of treatment. But in early
2008, Friedmann said she discovered that the cancer had returned in the form of
leukemia and that LaBrie had not filled at least five months of prescriptions she
was supposed to give him.

LaBrie,
testifying in her own defense, told the jury that she followed the instructions
from her son's doctors for the first four phases of treatment but stopped
giving her son the medications during the final phase because she "didn't
want to make him any sicker."

LaBrie said she
told her son's doctor two or three times that she was afraid that "he just
had had it."

"He was
just not capable of getting through any more chemotherapy," LaBrie said.
"I really felt that it could out-villainize the disease — the medicine
could — because he was very, very fragile."

LaBrie's
lawyer, Kevin James, told the jury LaBrie was depressed and overwhelmed by
caring for her son, who was severely autistic, nonverbal and developmentally
delayed. James said she made a "tragic mistake" in stopping her son's
at-home medication, but said her actions were not criminal.

LaBrie and the
boy's father, Eric Fraser, had a contentious relationship. LaBrie said she
received very little help from him, even after their son was diagnosed with
cancer.

After doctors
discovered LaBrie had withheld the medications, Jeremy went to live with his
father for the last year of his life. Eric Fraser was killed in a motorcycle
accident seven months after his son died.

Fraser's family
members wept in the back row of the courtroom as the verdict was read.

Eric Fraser's
brother, Andrew Fraser, later acknowledged the toll the heart-wrenching case
has taken on both families.

"It's been
a struggle for everybody, including the defendant," he said. "It's
never a good day to have to go through something like this, but we did."

LaBrie's
sister, Elizabeth O'Keefe, cried as she defended her sister to reporters after
the verdict. She said she expected guilty verdicts on the child endangerment
and assault charges, but was surprised jurors convicted her of attempted
murder.

"It's too
hard for them to know what my sister was going through at that time,"
O'Keefe said. "Nobody was there, just me and my close family. We loved
Jeremy more than any other little boy in this whole world."

"I don't
think that my sister had any intentions of hurting Jeremy — ever — and never
will believe that in my life," she said.

LaBrie will be
sentenced Friday morning. She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years on the
attempted murder charge, 10 years on a charge of assault and battery on a
disabled person, five years on assault and battery on a child causing
substantial injury and 2½ years on reckless endangerment of a child.

Her attorney,
Kevin James, asked to delay sentencing until next week so he could write a
sentencing memo and gather letters on LaBrie's behalf from her friends and
family. Judge Richard Welch said he would review the letters and sentencing memo,
but would not agree to schedule the hearing next week.